Did my larger battery cause this?

I think humans are just innate problem solvers. U ever play that game where someone, working on their car drops and bolt / nut and everyone tries to be the first to find it? I know this sounds really pathetic, but I love that fuckin game! In a roundabout way, this is that.

 

I have a bit of experience lol. My rule is you never poop where you eat, in this case that means keep your daily driver pristine and beat the hell out of the off road rig.
In my world, we have levels of off road equipment... and cost. You have municipal stuff like mini excavators and skid steers. You have medium duty like normal construction wheel loaders. And then you have the stuff that can work at 14K feet in the mountains. The best and most expensive.
A Camry is municipal.
A Tacoma is construction.
A Unimog is heavy duty.
They can all go on pavement but don't take the Tacoma where the Unimog lives and don't take the Camry where the Tacoma lives.

 

Unimog!

 

Hard wheeling breaks shit. Who knew?

 

Wow, our trucks are made of foil?

 

Lithium doesn't do well in extreme temps in either direction. No good under the hood due to heat, and they can't be recharged in ambient temps below freezing. Only option if you want that for a second battery really is to mount it in the cab somewhere, with a DCDC charger that's temperature aware (newer Redarc models are smart enough to hold off on charging until it's warm enough).

 

Well what u expect u added more weight that was outside of manufacturer specs . Should of reinforced it first to accommodate the weight difference .

 

My 2nd gen sh!t metal is also cracking pretty bad, mostly on the battery side. I don't have any extra weight up front, only running OME lift kit but my Taco does take the occasional high speed beating on logging roads... Curious to know if anybody has had any catastrophic failures because of the cracks? I'm still on the fence about trying to repair or simply let it "settle" until its cracked enough that the flex doesn't affect it anymore.

 

stop drill the crack to give the metal some relief, otherwise the crack will continue to the end of the metal

 

Some updates. Today I took the bumper off to straighten out the break and weld it back together. I actually found that the passenger side was pretty busted up too. No "heavier" battery on this side, nor did it take any impaling from erroneous limbs on the trail. So while I have no doubt that the limb I hit played a major role in the damage I posted yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some breakages on the driver's side like there was on the passenger side even before I pushed into the limb.


So with help from a friend who is a better welder than I, we straightened things out best we could, and welded the break. Is it perfect? No. Will it likely crack again in another spot? Certainly. But it seems that given the way I use the truck ("hard"), that even if I was to buy and install a new core support, it would only break again. The breaks on the passenger side prove that.


So for now I am satisfied. I will keep an eye on things.

 

That is actually a pretty damn good looking core support repair! That sheet metal is SO THIN.

 

Yeah a lot of cursing was had as holes were burnt each time time

 

Yeah you did really good. Like Anything in Welding, fit up is Everything. Looks like u guys got it damn near back to the same spot. Search around here for the other threads. I think plating over that crack with no "90's" on the plate, would do you a lot of good. Just an off the cuff comment though.